


Bern the heart out of you

by marysutherland



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-13
Updated: 2011-12-13
Packaged: 2017-10-27 07:04:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marysutherland/pseuds/marysutherland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sherlock is accused of a murder, he needs some unexpected help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’m assuming that Series 2 will end with Sherlock’s supposed death at Reichenbach, after which he will then eventually return. This is set after that return.
> 
> Betaed by the wonderful [Warriorbot](http://warriorbot.livejournal.com/)

Afterwards, John wondered if it had been a premonition or just common sense that got him panicking about Sherlock's trip. Eighteen months before they'd gone to Switzerland and Sherlock had almost died there. Had shammed dead for nearly a year, in danger of his life. And now Mycroft wanted Sherlock to come and meet him in Bern. Alone.

"Moriarty's networks are still out there," John protested.

"But Mycroft sees a way of destroying them with my help. And, before you ask, I have spoken to him myself, confirmed the message."

"Might still be a trap. He could have been captured, threatened."

"We have signals for that," Sherlock replied, starting to pull books off the shelves, in what John recognised as his idea of packing for a trip.

"Right," John said. Surely he'd get used to Sherlock eventually. But his lover still frequently managed to demonstrate what were either charming quirks or just complete bloody weirdness.

"Can you stop panicking and find me some clean socks?" Sherlock asked.

"You could find some yourself."

"Laundry's not my department, it's yours. Socks, underwear, but no need for my walking boots this time because Mycroft won't be shifting his lazy arse anywhere. I'll sort out the shirts."

***   

It was just after three a.m. and John's phone was ringing. Only Harry or Sherlock would phone at such an impossible time and when John blearily stared at the number he was relieved to see it was Sherlock. He hoped his brain was sufficiently in gear, because he really didn't appreciate getting yelled at for idiocy before breakfast.

"John here, what's up?"

"John, I'm in Bern," Sherlock said. There was something wrong in his voice, a slurring that rang immediate alarm bells.

"Are you hurt?"

"They tricked me. Been doped. I'm on the outskirts of Bern, I think."

"I can try and get a GPS trace."

"It's OK, I'm OK. Not dead yet. But they got Mycroft too. He may be dead. Not sure. Burned out car twenty metres away and someone in it. Maybe I should take a look. See if they burned Mycroft. Burned in Bern."

"No!" John yelled. "You need help." Why the fuck had he agreed to let Sherlock go without him _?_  "Find someone's house, phone the police! If you've been drugged you need to get seen to immediately."

"Maybe they drugged Mycroft too. Poisoned the fondue. I was in the hotel talking to him and I felt so bad, just had to lie down. Might be him in the car."

_God, what was best to do?_ "See if anyone's alive in the car, moving, breathing, but don't touch anything otherwise. And take a photo, so we've got some evidence." Whoever they were, they might be organised enough to remove a whole car from a crime scene. "Then get yourself somewhere safe and call the police. I'll get onto things this end. Don't do anything stupid. Do you want me to stay on the line while you find help?"

"No, I'm OK. Don't worry, John, Mycroft'll have it all under control. Love you, bye." He must be under the influence to be talking about 'love', John thought grimly. Then he scrubbed at his face, and decided he had to have some coffee before the next phone call. It wasn't going to be easy breaking the news to Lestrade that something terrible might have happened to his husband.

*** 

"All the Swiss police are telling me so far is that there's been a serious car accident," Lestrade reported back a few hours later. "Sherlock's waiting to make a statement to them, there's a badly-burnt body been found in Mycroft's hire car, they're running tests on it to see who it is. Was."

"Foul play?"

"Must be, though they're not confirming it. I've got a flight booked out to Bern for later this morning."

"Do you need me to come?"

"Not yet." Lestrade's voice had the rigid control it got in the middle of a complex operation. "If it is Moriarty's old lot, you know what they're like for multiple operations and distractions. I don't want us all rushing over to Switzerland only for them to start picking off people in the UK. Have you warned all the target list to be on their guard?"

"I've talked to Anthea, Mrs Hudson, Mrs Holmes, your brothers, Harry and my parents. Anyone else? I don't think Sarah's a target anymore, and you've presumably contacted Sally and the rest of your Met team."

"Warn Molly Hooper as well."

"Are they likely to attack Barts? It's a fairly remote connection."

"Mycroft's got quite friendly with her recently. I think it's probably just a way of irritating Sherlock, but she ought to know, at least. And make sure you and Mrs Hudson move out of Baker Street, because that's the most likely target of all."

"I'll see to it," John said. "Let me know if you need me to do anything else. It's bloody frustrating just sitting here."

"I _know_. But we've got to work out what's going on or we'll just run into even more trouble. I'll speak to you soon."

***

"Any news?" John demanded when Lestrade finally phoned that evening.

"Mycroft's dead," Lestrade said. "I haven't seen him, he's so badly burned they said it wasn't advisable. But they've done DNA tests, and there's no doubt."

"Oh Christ, I'm so sorry, Greg." In the last few years John had come almost to expect his premature death or Sherlock's, they'd been living on borrowed time for so long. But not Mycroft. How could anyone kill the British government?

"I...I hope at least it was quick and painless," Lestrade said and hastily added. "But I still can't get a proper handle on what happened. It's a complete bloody mess, not helped by the fact that there are two sets of police involved and they seem to have decided to have a turf war."

"How's Sherlock?" It seemed selfish to ask, but he had to know.

"I don't know that either. I haven't been able to trace him. He's not at the hotel and his phone's switched off. Maybe he ended up needing medical treatment, but I've been phoning round hospitals, and no-one seems to know about him. And he's pretty bloody memorable. Have you heard from him, John?"

"Not since that first phone call. I...perhaps he's just decided to appoint himself a consultant to one section of the Bern police and he's too busy with that to bother about the rest of us." It'd probably be Sherlock's preferred way of dealing with Mycroft's death, and he suspected Lestrade would understand.

"Oh sod it, that's probably what happened," Lestrade replied. "Yeah, well if they've got Sherlock on their backs no wonder the Kripo or whatever they're called, don't want to tell me anything. They're probably panicking we're trying to take the case over. But I might see if any of my old Interpol contacts are any help."

"Is there anything I can do?" John asked. He was going almost crazy with worry himself just sitting around, heart pounding whenever his phone rang.

"I was thinking...maybe Anthea can handle the London end and you can come over here? Because I need..." Lestrade came to a halt. _Someone to talk to_ , thought John, _someone's shoulder to cry on?_ "I need someone I can rely on here."

"Don't know if I can get a flight tonight," John said, making rapid calculations, "but I'll be over as soon as I can tomorrow morning."

"Let me know your flight and I'll meet you. Someone's got to sort out this godawful mess, and it might have to be us."

***

Lestrade looked _old_ when John saw him in the arrivals lounge, a man who hadn't slept properly and didn't expect to ever again.

"I still can't get anyone to tell me how it happened," Lestrade said, as he drove them off to the hotel. Not Mycroft and Sherlock's fancy palace, of course, but a cheapish chain. "If I just knew that, it'd help."

"Sherlock said he was in the hotel and he started to feel ill," John said. "And Mycroft was with him then."

"Yeah, that bit's clear enough, I checked with the staff there. Mycroft met Sherlock at the airport, took him back to the hotel, and then went off on his own again. Came back about 10 p.m., and they had a meal in the hotel’s restaurant. Then back to Sherlock's room and that's the last anyone saw of them. Till the police got a call and found the car on the outskirts of the city...and the two of them."

"Doesn't make sense," John said automatically. "Why take Mycroft out there to kill him rather than do it in the hotel? If it's a kidnapping and it went wrong, why did they..." – _Oh God_ – "Why is Sherlock still alive and not Mycroft?"

"I have no _fucking_ idea," Lestrade said, and John saw his hands tighten on the steering wheel. "My insisted he'd be OK coming to Switzerland, he said he knew what he was doing. But I should have known that this was sodding legwork, and it would go wrong."

After a moment, he added: "The first thing we do is to find Sherlock."

"I thought he was with the police?"

"I presume he still is, but why hasn't the fucker been in contact?  And the police aren't telling me anything.  I...there is something else up, I know it, but I don't know what."

"So what do we do? Do you want me to come along to the police? I'm still not officially Sherlock's next of kin, but..."

"No, don't think you're going to get any further with them than me. What I want you to do – and I know this is going to sound crazy – is wander round Bern."

"Doing what?" John demanded, frowning across at Lestrade.

"Just keeping an eye out for stuff. Weird stuff. Something is going to happen, someone is controlling this, whatever it is. I know it. There's another shoe waiting to drop. I just hope to hell it's not got a bloody flick-knife in it."

***

The text came late in the afternoon, when a footsore John was just psyching himself up for the next trek, off to a theatre in a cellar. (There was something Sherlockian in that, worth investigating). Except he didn't need to anymore:

_Sherlock's been arrested. Meet me back at the hotel ASAP. GL_

He supposed it wasn't surprising. Sherlock got up Lestrade's nose enough sometimes, and a bunch of foreign coppers would probably be even more unhappy about an arrogant Englishman telling them they were idiots. But the situation was bad enough as it was without Sherlock idiotically stirring up another hornet's nest. Still, at least Swiss police cells were probably kept clean and tidy. He hurried back to the hotel, wishing he was more use.

And then he saw Lestrade sitting wearily in reception, and he knew somehow things had got even worse. There was a defeated slump to his spine that John had only ever seen a couple of times before.

"What's happened?" John demanded, hurrying over to him. "What has Sherlock done now?"

"Been arrested, like I said," Lestrade. "For murder, John. They're saying he killed Mycroft."

***  
Horaz Rumpolt was the best defence advocate in Switzerland, Anthea had told them, but he didn't look much: squat and balding, with a bulbous nose in a face whose high colour suggested too many years of drinking. But the moment he started talking, John felt reassured.

"The examining magistrate at this stage just has to show that Mr Holmes – Sherlock – is a serious suspect and that there's a risk of flight or collusion. I can appeal against the arrest warrant if you like, but it would be a waste of your time and money. The more important thing is finding some evidence in his favour, so we can put up a proper fight."

"I still don't understand why they arrested him," John said. "Did they...I mean he _was_ drugged at the hotel, wasn't he?" Sherlock's phone call kept replaying in his head. Could he have faked that? Had it all just been a lie? But why would he have done that?

"Yes. They did tests on him when they first found him and he had traces of flunitrazepam in his blood. Good Swiss drug that. Intended as a treatment for insomnia."

"Marketed as Rohypnol," Lestrade added wearily. "Not just for date rape, it's been used a lot for robberies as well. So, the presumption was his drink was tampered with."

"Yes," said Rumpolt. "You must understand, the police took this crime very, very seriously. Bern is a very safe city, but we had this horrendous attack on two visitors, one a respectable government official, staying at a top hotel. The initial assumption was that it was some robbery or attempt at extortion gone disastrously wrong."

"So why did they change their mind?" Lestrade demanded. "There was something wrong with Sherlock's statement, wasn't there?"

You forgot at your peril, John thought, that Lestrade was a bloody good detective. He suspected Lestrade was obsessing over clearing Sherlock to avoid having to think about losing Mycroft, but that was fine by him right now.

"Sherlock said he felt ill after returning to his hotel room with his brother. They had eaten in the hotel restaurant and he had not ingested anything subsequent to that. Flunitrazepam is a rapidly acting drug, so it must have been administered during the meal. Now, it is one thing to put something in someone's drink in a crowded bar, but in a restaurant – and it was not very busy, they were among the last there – it would be much harder. The police checked all the waiting staff, could not find anything suspicious. And besides, these are clever, observant men, are they not? How easy would it be to slip something into a glass right under their noses?"

"Could it have been administered some other way?" John asked.

"It is normally administered orally," Rumpolt said, "though I believe it can also be administered via..." He hesitated. "I am not sure of the word, but in your...in your bum, bottom."

"Suppositories," Lestrade said. "I think he'd have noticed that as well. And no signs of any injection marks? The police checked for that?"

"Yes. But there was something else at the restaurant. The staff said that the pair – Sherlock Holmes, and his brother Mycroft – were drunk. Or Mycroft Holmes certainly was. Not incapable, but a little loud. They were quarrelling with other, and they left before they had finished their meal. And they were still arguing when they went through reception. They went back to Sherlock's room – the keycard confirms Sherlock's statement on that – and then the trail goes cold. Is that the right phrase?"

"It doesn't sound like My getting drunk," Lestrade said, frowning, "but maybe he'd been given something as well? I think roofies and alcohol interact, we'll need to ask an expert on that."

"It does sound like Mycroft and Sherlock quarrelling though," John added. "They're bad enough stone cold sober, if they were both high on something, it might..." _It might have turned nasty_ , he thought. You never knew with Sherlock and Mycroft how much was just habit and how much was genuine bad blood between the pair.

"So what happened when they got back to the room?" Lestrade asked. "Sherlock collapses. Does Mycroft?"

"We do not know," Rumpolt replied. "That is the problem, that we do not know what occurred then. No-one else entered the room, we know that much from the keycard monitoring system."

"They could have let someone else in. And the keycard systems can be spoofed," John said. "Sherlock knows a man who can do it."

"Perhaps. But the police searched the room, and found no-one's prints there that should not have been there. Sherlock's and Mycroft's and those of the chambermaids."

"Gloves?" Lestrade said.

"You would expect scattering – no, that is not the word – smudging. No unexplained prints or smudges on Mycroft Holmes' car either, though that was so badly damaged you would not perhaps expect much useful evidence. But there was one other thing that they did find in Sherlock's room. Hidden inside a sock, there was a partially used pack of tablets."

John very carefully didn't look at Lestrade. Perhaps a bit too carefully.

"They were flunitrazepam tablets," Rumpolt said. "I must know about my client, if I going to help him. Does he have any legitimate reason for having those? Is he a drug user, and if so, of what kind? Please, it will not disturb me if I know about him, but I need to know."

"He's not an addict," John said instinctively.

"He's an ex-addict," Lestrade added firmly. "He used a lot of cocaine when he was younger, possibly amphetamines as well. He's been clean for a number of years, but..." he paused and looked apologetically at John, "I think he still sometimes acquires illegal drugs, to use in experiments or as bribes. It's not out of the question that he might have a pack of roofies on him to give to someone or use on someone. I'm not saying he did, mind you, but it's not impossible."

"Any prints on the packet?" John asked.

"No," said Rumpolt. "That does seem to have been handled with gloves on."

"So they could have been planted."

"Yes. But the police think that Sherlock faked his own drugging, doping. That he took the drug himself later on, to make it look like an outside attack. Or even that he took it in order to calm himself before carrying out an attack on his brother."

"They think he attacked Mycroft in the hotel?" Lestrade asked.

"They are not sure. There is no sign of a struggle in Sherlock's room, but if Mycroft Holmes was drunk or doped, there would not necessarily be. I need to ask something..." Rumpolt came to a halt. "I know this must be distressing, Mr Lestrade, but I need to ask this."

"Fire away," Lestrade said stoically, and John wondered if he'd ever imagined being on the receiving end of this kind of awful discussion.

"If, and you note I say 'if', Sherlock Holmes did attack his brother, what would you expect the outcome to be? They are both healthy, strong adults, aren't they?"

"Mycroft's seven years older than Sherlock." Lestrade forced the words out. "Sherlock's a lot fitter and he's been trained in unarmed combat by an expert." – John could feel his own throat tightening – "Mycroft wouldn't have stood a chance."

"But it didn't happen like that!" John found himself shouting. "It can't have done! Sherlock wouldn't have killed Mycroft. Someone must have doped both of them, then come to the room and...and somehow got them out of the hotel and into Mycroft's car." He tried desperately to calm himself down, think, rather than just panic. "Is there CCTV footage from the hotel? Or someone who saw something?"

"There are blind spots in the CCTV coverage and a way out via the goods entrance," Rumpolt said. "A clever man, a man who knows about these matters, could do it. There is also supposedly some CCTV footage from the car park; they are trying to enhance it, because the image quality is so poor that the figures are not easily distinguishable."

"So it doesn't have to be Sherlock," John said.

"No, someone else could have done it," Rumpolt said. "But it would be twice as hard leaving the hotel with two bodies. If somebody wanted Mr Mycroft Holmes, why did they take Sherlock Holmes along? If they wanted to kill Mycroft, why did they let Sherlock live?"

"So they could frame him," John said.

"But who and why?" Rumpolt said, shrugging. "This is the problem, Mr, Dr Watson. You are saying that the crime was committed by an invisible man. He was not seen drugging the brothers in the restaurant. He got into the hotel room without being seen, he got out again without being seen. The police have no fingerprints, they have nothing. If there was another suspect, we could investigate, we could make a case. But at the moment it is just chasing shadows."

"One of the other guests?" John asked.

"I've got Anthea tracing them all," Lestrade broke in. "I can try talking to the hotel staff again as well. Maybe one of them will give me something.  But there's one thing we have to do first."

"What's that?" John asked.

"I need to speak to Sherlock myself. Find out if there's _anything_ he remembers that might be helpful."

"Why haven't they let us see him or have calls from him, anyhow?" John demanded.

"He has a reputation," Rumpolt said, "Actually, you do as well, Dr Watson. That you can both escape from anywhere, play all sorts of strange tricks on people. Bend their minds, get them to do anything. But they might let you see him, Mr Lestrade. If...if you are sure it wouldn't be too painful."

"No," said Lestrade. "I have to know what happened, and Sherlock's my only hope of that. And if the bastard is innocent, I need to help him clear his name."

_If_ , John thought. He doesn't believe in Sherlock anymore, he's already halfway to accepting that he killed Mycroft. My love killed Lestrade's love. It had a horrible, smooth plausibility about it. If Sherlock had been drunk – if for some bizarre reason he'd taken some of the roofies – and Mycroft had been being particularly patronising? Sherlock was impulsive sometimes, dangerously so.  A blow in the wrong place...no, it had not happened, it would not have happened. He trusted Sherlock.

"Please, see if you can arrange for me to see him as well," he said, and he knew how desperate he sounded, from the pitying look he got from Rumpolt. "Just for a few minutes."

"I will see what I can do for both of you," Rumpolt said. "And if there is anything further I find out...I have certain contacts within the city, some of the men I have previously helped to defend. If I find anyone who might be able to help, who might know of someone who had been hiring accomplices, say, I will let you know."

"Thanks for all your help," said John.

"I will get him back for you, if I can, Dr Watson," Rumpolt said, getting up. "But I'm afraid I'm just a lawyer. I can't solve this puzzle for you."

***

Rumpolt had somehow fixed it for Lestrade to visit Sherlock, even if they still wouldn't let John near him. He didn't go with Lestrade to the police station; he was worried he _would_ end up trying to plan a break-out. He simply didn't know how to go about tracking down the gang who had done this. It had to be a whole gang of these "invisible men", he was convinced, people who could somehow move through Bern without being spotted. Sherlock would find them if he could only get him free. Or if he could just _tell_ John where to go, what to look for. He was lost without his detective genius. Why was Sherlock just sitting in his cell and not solving this?

Well, maybe he didn't trust Rumpolt to pass on his messages. But when he had a visit from Lestrade, they could get things sorted...

***

John was still sitting in their hotel room, staring at the map of Bern, wondering if there was some significance to the route the car had taken on that night, when Lestrade came back. He came in and sat down heavily on his bed and stared at the floor. At the floor, not at John. _Oh God_ , John thought. _This is bad. This is beyond bad._

"What did Sherlock say?" he asked eventually, into the dull silence of the room.

"The truth," Lestrade said, still not looking at him. "That the last thing he remembered in his hotel room wasn't feeling ill. That it was standing next to the window and seeing Mycroft lying on the floor. And when he checked he was dead."

"Is he saying...he can't be saying?"

"He thinks he killed Mycroft, but he's not sure," Lestrade said, in the dead tone of someone reading out a tedious press statement. "The Rohypnol's scrambled up his memories of that evening so much. He can remember arguing with Mycroft, he can remember Mycroft being dead. He doesn't remember taking the Rohypnol or how he got out of the hotel, or anything else."

"Is he sure that he took the Rohypnol himself? Could there have been someone else there? Someone who came in when Sherlock and maybe Mycroft had collapsed and carried out the killing?"

"Another bloody invisible man? John, we have to face it. It was Sherlock who did it. He says he's going to plead guilty."

"To murder?"

"There's some lesser charge, killing or something. And if he pleads guilty they'll probably give him a reduced sentence, drop the charges about taking the car and attempting to destroy the body. Might not have to serve too many years."

"But why–"

"I don't _know_ why!" Lestrade yelled. "I don't know what the fuck Mycroft thought he was doing."

"What do you mean?"

"I've seen what Sherlock's like when he's high or drunk. If Mycroft started needling him then..."

"You think it was an accident?" John said with sudden hope.

"I don't know, and it doesn't bloody _matter_. What matters is that My's dead and Sherlock's responsible for it. And that it's over. Everything is over." He stood up, rubbing his neck. "I'm going home, back to London. I'll see if I can get a flight tonight."

"Greg–"

"It's over, John. Sherlock's admitted it. Nothing more to be done."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock has killed Mycroft. Allegedly.

"I'm going to clear your name," John told Sherlock, as they sat in the cramped, messy police cell. They were letting him visit now; the whole system had suddenly relaxed a little. They had their man, and he wasn't Swiss, which was clearly a big relief. Just two stupid foreigners and a drunken, drug-fuelled row.

"How quaint," Sherlock said. "It's not that long a sentence. And I can probably arrange to be transferred to a British prison if you'd prefer it."

"Why are you pleading guilty? You didn't do it."

"You're very loyal," Sherlock at his most untouchable, cool and sarcastic. Impossible to imagine a man like that attacking someone in a frenzy, killing them. If you hadn't seen the other side of Sherlock. The dark side. Even deadly, perhaps.

"You didn't do it, did you? Tell me you didn't." John found himself demanding.

"I didn't do it," Sherlock said smoothly. He was beautifully dressed and so calm, indifferent almost. He didn't look like a prisoner, like a murderer, but as if he was about to stride out for a photo-shoot.

"I meant...Oh, God, what is happening? What happened?"

"I can't remember," Sherlock said, and you could hear the cracks in the ice now. "But I'm afraid that's no excuse. Whatever the legal case, I am the reason that Mycroft is dead. And that is all you need to know."

"Is it because you _feel_ guilty?" John said. Maybe it was him that was going insane. "Why are you not fighting?" He put out his hand towards Sherlock's, which shrank back. _Turning in on himself already_ , John thought. Sherlock's eyes were staring blindly into space the way they did when he had a complex problem to solve. And then suddenly they turned and focused on John, and he announced:

"I...I have to be patient. You do as well. There is a clever man behind this scheme and we have to wait to see what his next move is."

John felt the surge of relief in his body: "Do you know who's behind it?"

"I have my suspicions, but there's no evidence as yet."

"What do you need me to do?"

"Wait, as I said," Sherlock replied."The 'invisible man', as you so bizarrely put it, will reveal himself, and then we have him. Go back to London and stay there till I need you."

"Just go back? Not do anything?"

"We don't, I don't know what's best to do yet. When I do, we will act. Don't worry, John, I don't propose to enjoy the hospitality of the Swiss justice system for too long."

***

John lasted six weeks – well, five weeks and six days – before he went to New Scotland Yard and found Sergeant Donovan.

"I need help," he said, when she took him into an office, and waited for the obvious tasteless joke. But instead Sally just looked him up and down fiercely and asked:

"Psychiatric? Financial? Legal? I can recommend a divorce lawyer, if you need one."

"Is Greg still on sick leave? He's not answering his phone."

"Officially, he's signed off for three months," Sally replied, her chin going up.

"Unofficially?"

"He's not coming back. He says he's had enough. That he's resigning from the force. I suppose he can afford to, with Mycroft's money. You know what's he done? He's gone off to France to buy a house. Says he's gonna move to Dijon, near where his family came from originally, get a job in the vineyards or something."

"But the police is his life. And so's London."

"They were," Sally said, folding her arms. "Congratulate Sherlock for me, next time you see him. He's done what I thought was impossible. Broken Greg Lestrade."

"It wasn't Sherlock who killed Mycroft," John said. "And yes, I remember what you told me once. That he'd end up standing over the body of someone he killed."

"Well?"

"If it was him, he then made a half-arsed attempt to conceal his crime, which the police saw through easily. Whatever you think he's capable of, Sally, he'd be a more competent criminal than that."

She nodded. "Maybe. And I know I'm gonna get no peace from you till we know for sure what happened. OK, so just suppose the Freak is innocent? How do we get the little scrote who did this?"

" _We_?"

"Greg's not around to help, I will. I can't do anything officially, of course, not our case to deal with, but if you need any advice..."

"What I need," John said, "is the police files on the case. Sherlock pleaded guilty, so his advocate never got them all."

"Actually, that we might be able to do. I can always claim we're investigating previous cases back in London. OK, I'll try and sort that out for you."

"Thanks, Sally."

"We owe you something. Maybe even the Freak something. But if the files show him guilty, you're gonna have to accept that, John.  And work out if you want to stay with a man who goes crazy when he's high. Don't want anything happening to you when he gets out."

***

"Got some good news and bad news for you from Switzerland," Sally announced on the phone early the next week.

"Give me the good news," John said, "God knows I need it."

"Got the case files through on Mycroft's death."

"And the bad news?"

"All in German."

"Fuck! I hadn't thought of that. I knew a few words, but not enough for that."

"I'll being 'em round to 221B on Wednesday evening, I'm free then," Sally added. "And I'll see if I can find anyone who can help translate."

"Thanks," said John. It was a start at least.

***

It was surprising how many people were reluctant to return your calls if you were a murderer's boyfriend. Molly Hooper knew German, but he couldn't get hold of her, however many messages he left. There was Google Translate, but that was getting pretty desperate. He'd just have to thank Sally for the files and leave them to stew till he could find someone. And then on Tuesday night he got a text: _Found someone who can help with the German. I'll bring him along tomorrow. Sal D_

***

John thought he was ready for anything, until the doorbell went and Sally came up the stairs. With Anderson behind her.

"What the fuck?" John said. Sally couldn't be back with him again, could she? Surely she wouldn't make _that_ mistake twice?

"We don't need–" he began.

"You don't need me?" Anderson broke in, with immediate aggression. "Well, I can just go home then, and leave you to look through the forensic reports on your own. Have fun. Do you know how to translate _Quetschwunden_ or _Knochenbrüche_ , by the way?"

"I..." said John and stopped.  He had to do this, for Sherlock's state. He forced himself to breathe, and then looked up into Anderson's hostile eyes.

"I didn't know you'd be willing to help," he said at last.

"If by any improbable chance Sherlock Holmes is innocent," Anderson said, "I want to be the man who proves it. Because he would never, ever forget that."

"If we could maybe get a move on," Sally broke in. "We've got a lot of work to do tonight."

"You're going to stay, are you?" John said.

"Got yourself your own little murder squad. OK, have we got a wall clear where we can stick up some photos?"

***

He couldn't let himself think that it was _Mycroft's_ body in the burnt out car, John knew. Think of him as a stranger, try and see the whole thing from outside, the way Sally was automatically doing.

"OK," she said. "Mycroft Holmes is found dead in a car on the outskirts of Bern on March 10th. Cause of death is?"

"Unknown," said Anderson, from his seat on the couch. "They say he was probably dead when the car was set alight – no trace of smoke inhalation – but the body's so badly burned that they're not sure how he was killed. Might be head trauma, though there's no sign of fractures. But the lab seem to have made a complete hash of checking the stomach contents, so it's possible he was poisoned or drugged."

"Right," said Sally. "So why was he in the car and why was it set on fire?"

"Accident?" John asked. "The attackers were kidnapping Mycroft and Sherlock–"

"Any sign of prior damage to the car?" Sally asked.

"No," Anderson said, flicking through the pages. "And they think from the intensity of the burns on the corpse that petrol was specifically poured over that, not just the car generally."

"So," Sally went on, "possible deliberate attempt to destroy the body. Even though that doesn't make sense."

"Why not?" asked John.

"They couldn't expect to be able to prevent DNA recovery. If you can get it from thousand year old bones, you can get it from a fresh body, even a badly burned one. And if you're trying to conceal someone's identity, you don't go off with the body in their car."

"So what's the alternative?" said John. This was turning into a slow-speed version of Sherlock's methods, and he was happy to fit into the 'useful idiot to bounce ideas off' role.

"That it's a message," Sally said. "Which is why they let Sherlock go. They wanted to show him that they could kill him if they wanted to. Whoever did this was someone very clever, well-organised, but also willing to take risks to be dramatic."

"Clever, risk-taking, dramatic tendencies," Anderson said. "Anyone we know like that? Oh, Sherlock Holmes himself."

"Yeah, we're keeping that possibility in mind," Sally said. "Especially because what we've got at the other end is Sherlock last seen with the victim. OK, so we've got Sherlock and Mycroft in Sherlock's hotel room from 11.15 onwards. How do we get both of them from there across town to Brunnadern, the suburb near where the car was found?"

"The car was seen in CCTV footage on Thunstrasse at 11.48 pm," Anderson said. "So half an hour to move one or possibly two bodies from the hotel into the car and then drive a couple of miles to a patch of wasteland. I'm surprised no-one noticed the fire."

"Bern's not exactly busy at night," John said, "but yeah, they must have chosen the spot carefully. Does the CCTV footage show who was driving the car?"

"No," Anderson said, "but they have got footage from the hotel car park. Not much help though."

Sally stuck the photos up on the wall. John could hardly work out what the fuzzy images showed, however closely he squinted.

"Look at the right-hand corner of the first one," she said. "That wheel, it's not a car wheel. And if you look at the rest of the sequence, someone is wheeling someone in a wheel chair. The last one is the best, though you still don't get much, just a back."

"It could be anyone," John said.

"Tall, thin man in a dark coat is pushing the wheelchair. Tall thin man with dark hair."

"The lighting's bad. He might not be dark-haired."

"OK," said Sally, "but probably not blond, and I reckon it's a man, rather than a woman."

"Hard to say. We don't know that it's anything to do with the murder. Could be a random guest."

"Any sign that it was someone who wasn't used to pushing a wheelchair?" Anderson said, coming to stand in front of the photos.

"No," Sally said. "But it'd be much easier to bring the car round to the front entrance of the hotel and get the person in the wheelchair in there, not trek across the car park with them."

"Unless you didn't want to be seen," said Anderson.

"What about the wheelchair?" John asked.

"That was left in the car park," Sally said. "Which again suggests that it was used for this. As does the fact that it had been nicked."

"Nicked?" John said.

"It was the hotel's. Taken from their first-aid room."

"Any fingerprints?"

"They must have been wearing gloves," said Anderson. "And the hotel staff think the wheelchair was taken in the evening, but they can't pin it down definitely closer than after four p.m."

"No sign of anything on the CCTV inside the hotel?" John asked.

"No," said Sally. "Whoever it was must have known how to avoid them."

"Then why did they get caught by the one in the car park?" said John. "Unless they wanted to be. And how does Sherlock get to the hotel at what, seven-thirty, eight and he's already worked out an escape route and stolen a wheelchair by ten, when he meets Mycroft?"

"You mean if it was a premeditated attack," Sally said. "But I thought Sherlock was claiming it wasn't?"

"Very convenient, isn't it," Anderson said, "how Sherlock mysteriously happens to have been given a drug that means he can't remember things clearly. Excuses a lot of things, doesn't it?"

"If you think Sherlock did it, why are you here?" John demanded, squaring up to Anderson.

"He's here because he's trying to help, you pillock," Sally said. "Stop it, you two. Bloody men. But that's a point in Sherlock's favour: he didn't have long to find out an escape route and he couldn't rely on finding a wheelchair to hand."

"Unless he knew the hotel layout already," said Anderson. "He's been to Switzerland before."

"He hasn't been to that hotel that I know of," John said.

"We'll need to check how visible the CCTV cameras are..." said Sally, and then stopped and stared at the photos again in silence. John immediately tried to breathe more quietly and wondered if he should tell Anderson to look the other way.

"We're thinking about this the wrong way," Sally said suddenly. "Start off by imagining you're Sherlock."

"God, no!" Anderson said immediately.

"Shut it, James! I'm serious. Think about it. If you were Sherlock and you were in Switzerland and you wanted to kill your brother, how would you do it?"

 _I can't bear to think about that_ , John told himself. He knew he was starting to flex his left hand, the way he did when it was near shaking, and that Sally had spotted that, would realise he was coming apart at the seams...

"What you'd _do_ ," Sally said patiently, "is push him off a mountain-side, like Moriarty once tried to do to him."

"If you could get Mycroft up a mountain in the first place," John said almost automatically.

"Sally's right," Anderson said. "He'd arrange some little accident with the bear pits. Or there are poisons that are difficult to detect, unless you know to look for them. That's how I'd...that's how I imagine Sherlock would plan it."

"So you're saying–" John began.

"I'm saying," Sally said, "that if Sherlock did kill Mycroft it wasn't premeditated. So somehow – we don't yet know how – he's taken something or been given something and he's out of his face. His own evidence suggests that, confirmed by the blood tests. We also know he has an argument with Mycroft. Suppose Mycroft ends up dead as a result. What would Sherlock do then?"

It was a _puzzle_ now, and John had got used to thinking about those.

"Fake an attack on both of them," he said immediately. "Or carry Mycroft back to his room somehow and fake an attack on him there. They both have _enemies_ , you could make it look like they had someone come to meet them at the hotel and it turned nasty."

"What he wouldn't do," Sally said, "is make a half-arsed attempt to dispose of the body."

"Unless he was so high he wasn't thinking clearly," Anderson said loudly. "And you know what? That's what the quarrel was about." He smiled triumphantly. "Why has no-one asked what the argument was between the brothers?"

"Oh, that's easy," John said. "Because that pair can have a heated argument about the correct colour for a piece of toast."

"The argument blew up suddenly and then they went back to Sherlock's room," Anderson said. "And the reason for the argument was that Sherlock took the Rohypnol in the restaurant."

"Why would he do that?"

"One of his bloody experiments. He takes the drug to see what the effects are like and then tells his brother what he's done. Mycroft’s annoyed, not surprisingly, they have an argument, which carries on as they go back to the hotel room. The argument gets more heated, Sherlock loses control, attacks Mycroft. Realises what's he done, tries to cover up his track, and comes up with this hare-brained scheme."

"No!" John protested, "It can't have happened like that..."

"Why not?" Anderson replied, smirking. "Are you claiming Sherlock would never pull that kind of stunt?"

"It's complete bollocks," Sally said firmly. "That's why it didn't happen like that. If Sherlock's with it enough to dodge the cameras inside the hotel, why does he get caught by the one in the car park? And why does he set the car on fire? Why doesn't he just keep driving into the mountains and then fake an accident there?"

"The Rohypnol is affecting him, he's worried he might crash for real," Anderson said.

"And he mysteriously somehow finds a place where no-one will notice a burnt-out car for hours?"

"And what about the petrol?" John said suddenly. "You said that petrol had been poured onto My...the body. How did Sherlock do that?"

"You mean when he has a car with a petrol tank?" Anderson asked. "Tricky one that."

"He's so out of it he can't drive straight, but he's suddenly able to siphon fuel out of the tank?"

"I don't know," Anderson said. "He bought it. Or maybe it was some other accelerant used. Maybe they were wrong about the fire."

"Maybe they were wrong about everything," John said. "Maybe we are."

"We need to talk to the witnesses," Sally said. "Particularly the staff at the restaurant. One of them might have seen Sherlock put something in his own glass, or show us there's some way for someone else to have done it. We should check where the CCTV cameras are in the hotel too–" She suddenly stopped and looked up at John and shrugged. "Yeah, well what I mean is, the Swiss police should do that."

"They won't listen to me," said John, "They've got their man already, or so they think." He found himself staring at Sally's tough, beautiful face, the _fire_ in it, and made an abrupt decision. "I'm going back to Bern next week to visit Sherlock. Will you come with me and help me solve this thing once and for all? I'll pay your fare."

Sally folded her arms and looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. "Never been to Switzerland," she said at last. "And I've got weeks of leave Personnel are nagging me to take. OK, I'll come."

It was only then that John looked at Anderson, whose face had taken on a familiar closed-down expression, one that said: _I know you didn't mean me and I wouldn't want to come with you anyhow_. Tempting just to stick with Sally, but...

"We need someone who speaks German as well," John said determinedly. "And who knows more about forensics than I do."

"I...I should be able to get the time off," Anderson said awkwardly. "That is if...if you could talk to my wife, explain what this is all about. Only, if she hears I'm going away somewhere with Sally, she might think..."

"I'll explain to her, of course," said John. "Thank you, thank you both very much." _Don't worry, Sherlock_ , a sarcastic voice in his head was saying, _The Scooby gang are on their way to rescue you_.

***

"Is it your first time back?" Sally asked John on the flight.

"Second. I'm trying to visit Sherlock every month, but it takes some planning. I've set up a visit for later this week." The trips were expensive as well, though he wasn't going to tell Sally that. He wasn't looking for sympathy.

"How's the Fr-Sherlock getting on? Is he OK in prison?"

"Yeah, he seems to be alright. Says it's better than boarding school, at least. They've got him at work in the book bindery, and he's learning Somali from some of the other inmates." John had been terrified at the start about what might happen to Sherlock, but Thorberg seemed to be pretty well-run. It was starting to sound almost safe, compared to some of the places Sherlock got to when at liberty.

"He's probably better off there than in a prison back home," Sally said. "Has he said anything about...you know? What happened."

"No," said John. "We don't, we talk about other things." It had been hard the first time: Sherlock had retreated into himself, the way he did sometimes, leaving only a hard facade on view. And John hadn't dared try and chase him down, force him to open up. Just sat there in that damned visiting room for hours getting lectured by Sherlock on comparative criminology. This time would be better: John had made sure he read the books he'd sent Sherlock, so he could discuss them, thought up other topics that might interest him. They could survive this thing, even if they had to be apart. Sherlock and he could cope, if they had to. He just hoped to God they didn't.

***

The hotel staff would all speak English, so it was an obvious division of labour: Sally and John took them, while Anderson went off to talk to the forensics people. John had to admit he was glad about that. Anderson might be turning out to be surprisingly helpful, but he still didn't _like_ the man. Sally was a lot easier to get on with.

The hotel manager was polite, if wary, but he cheered up when Sally said that the Met thought Sherlock might be innocent.

"I felt confident," he said, his lean face breaking into a smile, "that none of our guests would turn out to be a criminal. But nor are any of our staff, I assure you, Inspector Donovan." John noticed that Sally carefully didn't correct him on her title. "This must be the work of some international gang who targeted our hotel. Please feel free to ask any questions you need."

"Thank you," said Sally. "We'll talk to the restaurant staff first. But one question for you first. Had Sherlock Holmes stayed in the hotel before?"

"His brother visits our hotel quite regularly, but no, this was the first time that Sherlock himself stayed here."

"You're sure?" John asked. "You don't need to check your records?"

"No," the manager replied. "Mr Holmes is quite a celebrity in Switzerland, as indeed, are you, Dr Watson. After the drama of the Reichenbach Falls, you see. There has been a definite increase in English tourists coming to the region since then; middle-aged women, mainly, for some reason. So I was pleased when he was coming to our hotel. And now...it's obviously not the association we want. If you can clear his name, it would be very _helpful_."

***

Anna Luchsinger, the waitress who had served the Holmeses, was young and pretty and blonde and a few years ago John would have been tempted to ask her when her shift finished. But there were more important things to worry about now.

"I'd have remembered them even if it hadn't been for the...for what happened," she said. "Mycroft Holmes comes here quite often. Though to be honest, as far as I'm concerned he's just another boring businessman. But the other one, yes, the beautiful one with the beautiful coat. He's...very memorable."

"Tell us what you can remember about the evening," Sally asked. Her voice was gentle in a way that John had never heard before. "I know you gave a statement at the time, we've read it, but I suspect there's things you've remembered since or didn't think to say. There always are."

Anna was still looking at them warily. What would get through to her, John wondered, and then had an idea.

"What did they have to eat?" he asked, smiling at her. "I hope they appreciated your food. Sherlock is terribly bad about ordering things and then not eating them sometimes."

Anna smiled back suddenly. "I was cross about that," she said. "Mycroft had a starter, but Sherlock didn't, so that was a smaller bill to start with. And then they were sharing a fondue, and he was hardly bothering to eat. Just sitting at the table, staring at his phone, tapping away. It's not nice manners."

"They had wine to drink?" Sally asked.

"Yes, Fendant Valais, very suitable. They were both drinking that."

"How much did they have?"

"They say they were drunk, don't they, that's why they fought? But I didn't...we're careful here. We don't let our guests drink themselves sick."

"It's OK," John said hastily, "there's no suggestion of that. But how many bottles and could anyone have tampered with them, put something in them? Or could Sherlock have put something in his _own_ glass?"

"I suppose he could have done. But I don't see how anyone else could have drugged him. I opened one bottle for them, and then it was left on the table. They were drinking...they weren't drinking fast, just normal. I saw they'd finished the bottle, went over to ask if they'd like anything more. Mycroft Holmes said another bottle of the same. He was still eating the fondue, Sherlock Holmes just sitting there, with his phone."

"So you opened a second bottle, and took it over?" John said. Anna frowned.

"What happened then?" Sally asked. "You've remembered something more, haven't you?"

"I poured a glass out for Mycroft. Then I went to top up Sherlock's glass, but Mycroft put his hand over it, said Sherlock shouldn't have any more, it wouldn't be good for him. It was odd. I wondered if maybe it was Mycroft Holmes who was a little, tiny bit drunk." She held up her slim fingers for emphasis. "He took the bottle from me, put it on his side of the table, like it was just for him. And Sherlock looked up from his phone then, and said something very quickly. I didn't follow it, but he was cross. I didn't want to be involved in any argument, so I left, went back to the kitchen."

"And then?" Sally said.

"I went back out to start clearing away things from some of the other tables, but I could see out of the corner of my eye that they were still arguing. And then a few minutes later Sherlock Holmes stood up, and he was yelling something about interference, and he just walked out. Mycroft Holmes pulled out a handful of banknotes and left them on the table, far more than the meal had cost, and went out after him."

"What happened to the extra money?" Sally asked, smiling. "I mean, you probably felt you deserved it, after the way they'd behaved."

"We...we split it between us," said Anna. "Well, we didn't get a tip and we thought–"

"And what about the wine?" John broke in. "Let me get this right. There was one bottle that both of them drank from. What about the second one? Was it just Mycroft who had that or did Sherlock have some?"

Anna thought for a while. "I don't know," she said at last. "His glass was empty when he left, so he'd finished up what was he was drinking earlier. I don't remember seeing him get hold of the second bottle – like I said, Mycroft seemed to have charge of that – so maybe he didn't drink anything from that. But I wasn't watching them all the time."

"So there could have been something in the second bottle," said John.

"There wasn't," Anna said. "We...we drank it later, between us. We get to have the wine that the customers don't finish."

"You're sure it got drunk?" said John. "Someone couldn't have swapped it?"

"It was nice wine, almost a whole bottle of it. Normally we just get a few dregs. I kept an eye on it, when we took it back to the kitchen, so nobody could sneak off on their own with it. Nobody could have poisoned the bottles, it's not possible."

"And there was no-one else near their table at any time?"

"No. It was late, it was quite quiet, and Mycroft Holmes has a preferred table in the restaurant. One that isn't near anyone else's, that isn't on the route to the toilets so that people can sneak past and listen to his conversations. Whatever happened that night, it didn't happen here, it's nothing to do with us."

***

"It has to have happened there," John insisted.  "There's something odd about that second bottle."

"It doesn't make sense, though," Sally said. "We're looking for something Sherlock had and not Mycroft, not the other way round. Sherlock had the fondue and the wine, both of which he shared with Mycroft."

"Unless Mycroft was drugged as well. Maybe that was why he was behaving strangely."

"Drugged how, John? The stuff works very quickly, that's the point. Someone sticks it in the fondue and both of them would be keeling over at the table. And we've got no evidence that Mycroft had anything."

"Maybe Anderson will find something from the forensics lot," said John. "If he hadn't managed to get all their backs up, that is."

 _God_ , he thought, _it's down to Anderson now to clear Sherlock. That's how desperate we are._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John's last hope of clearing Sherlock's name for Mycroft's murder is Anderson.

"I don't know what the _Kriminaltechnische Dienst_ think they're doing," Anderson complained, when he finally turned up at the cafe where he'd arranged to meet Sally and John.

"What do you mean?" Sally asked.

"The lab has a good reputation; I've read research papers written by some of their scientists. And yet they've made a complete mess of this case. Samples lost, incomplete records, can't answer half my questions. They seem total incompetents."

"You're sure–" John began.

"You think I don't know what I'm talking about? You think I can't tell good work from bad?" He was so thin-skinned, even when Sherlock wasn't around, that it was painful.

"Of course not," John said hastily."I believe what you're saying. But what went wrong? Did they just have an off-day with the case and they're covering up? Are they over-worked?"

"Switzerland's murder rate is 60% of the UK's," Anderson replied promptly. "It's...it's as if they were just going through the motions. They haven't even done some of the most basic things, like a proper cross-check of the medical and dental records."

"What?" John demanded. "Then how did they identify the body?"

"DNA, of course, how do you think?"

"Just DNA?" An impossible idea had suddenly occurred to him.

"Well, Mycroft had a distinctive watch, as well–"

"But he was burnt...beyond recognition, wasn't he?" John said. Anderson nodded and for once there was a hint of sympathy in his face. _I have to phrase this next question right_ , John thought.

"Has anyone...have you or anyone you heard of ever been approached by someone trying to bribe you?" he said. Anderson's face went very still. "Forensics isn't that well paid a job, is it?"

"The lab scientists get more than scene of crime officers," Anderson said. "But Switzerland's an expensive place to live."

"You're implying it's not Mycroft's body?" Sally broke in. "How can that be possible? There was _somebody_ in that car."

"Every morgue has unclaimed bodies," Anderson said. "It's possible, I suppose, but it would be very difficult..."

"With enough money and contacts?" John asked.

" _I_ wouldn't take a bribe to fake evidence. There is no sum that Sherlock could offer that would be enough for that."

"But what about Mycroft?" John said.

Anderson stared at him agape for a moment and then croaked: "Are you suggesting–"

"–that Mycroft faked his own death?" Sally burst in, almost shrieking. "And framed Sherlock for it? Oh. My. God. No, it can't be."

"What did you say about the man who pulled this stunt?" John demanded. "Clever, well-organised, a weakness for the dramatic. Look at the photos from the car park and tell me that tall thin man couldn't be Mycroft?" Sally was fishing the copies out of the file, screwing up her eyes.

"Mycroft and Sherlock, after all," she breathed, "but the other way round. But why?"

"I have no idea," John said, "but we're going to find a man who can work it out. Sorry, Anderson, we're going to have to go to prison."

***

The guards at Thorberg didn't have a chance, of course, against Watson, Donovan and Anderson, the dream team of stroppy persistence. It took them an hour and a half but they finally got a meeting with the deputy prison director, who was small and bald and harassed-looking.

"If you come back tomorrow at the approved time, we can arrange a meeting for you with the prisoner Holmes," he told them. "That can be allowed, as a concession." He didn't add "for difficult foreigners", even though he was clearly thinking that.

"Sherlock's innocent of the crime he has been convicted of," John repeated, for at least the twentieth time.

"Dr Watson, there are no guilty men in Thorberg, or so they would have you believe. They have all been the victims of tragic miscarriages of justices. But there are systems in place to determine such matters and I cannot allow you to bypass them. Can you please understand–" Someone was knocking at the door of the office, yelling something. When the director opened the door, a guard came in and unleashed a torrent of German. Somewhere lurking in it John thought he heard the words _Sherlock Holmes_.

 _Sherlock's just ridden a motorbike out over the barbed wire_ , John thought, and realised he'd seen too many World War Two films.

"What are they saying?" he demanded, turning to Anderson.

"I'm not sure," Anderson said, looking tense, "it's the bloody Bern dialect, very hard to follow. And I'm not sure what _Geisel_ means."

"Hostage," the deputy director said hoarsely. "We have a hostage situation, involving your friend Mr Holmes. One of the other English prisoners has a knife, is threatening him."

"For God's sake!" John yelled, "why are we just standing here, then? I...we–"

"I'm trained in hostage negotiation," Sally said. "We can help."

John could almost see the deputy director waver between _Not standard protocol_ and _Someone to pass the buck to_. Passing the buck obviously won out.

"Follow me," he said, as he led them off down a corridor.

"Are you really a hostage negotiator?" John asked Sally in a low voice.

"Sort of," she said. "Well I went on part of the course. Look, this is bloody Sherlock, we just need to distract the other bloke and he'll pull some stunt."

Probably true, John thought, but from the roar he could hear up ahead they might already be too late.  The last door opened, and fuck, yes, there it was. A long hall with two ranks of galleries on either side, its style familiar from years of watching TV. And on the top gallery, up against the railing, a very familiar figure, grappling with a large, bearded opponent. _Trust Sherlock not to bother waiting to be rescued._

Everyone else, prisoners and guards were just crowding around, watching, as if they were stunned. Probably taking bets on the outcome, as well, John thought, looking frantically round for the stairs.

"You don't have a gun by any chance, do you?" Sally asked. "They're legal in Switzerland."

"Smuggling them out of Britain isn't," John replied. "Can we get up there?"

"Leave it," she said. "If we get too close he might try and take the Freak over the balcony with him. Didn't you teach Sherlock unarmed combat?"

"Yes," John said, "but the tosser never listens to a word I say." He yelled up, futilely, into the uproar. "For fuck sake's, Sherlock, just disarm him, it's not bloody performance art!"

Almost as if he'd heard him, Sherlock did a complex little wriggle, slipped through the other man's grip. A knife fell from the balcony, almost impaling the deputy prisoner director's foot. Amid the roar from the crowd, Sherlock's opponent charged him and was lifted neatly off his feet and tipped over the balcony...to fall smack onto a couple of large and luckless prisoners below.

John stared at the men lying screaming and cursing on the ground, and then up at Sherlock, panting and punching the air triumphantly. And then a firm hand curled round his arm.

"Now, this is more like home," Sally Donovan said cheerfully. "If you go and sort out the blokes on the floor, I'll make sure the Freak hasn't pulled any muscles."

***

They ended up in the office of the prison director this time, with Sally, Sherlock and Anderson all trying to explain what had happened simultaneously.

"Be quiet, everyone please," the director pleaded, with the look of a man wishing he was in a nice peaceful cell of his own. "Is there someone here who is in charge, who can explain what this is all about?"

"I'm Detective-Sergeant Donovan from the Metropolitan Police in London," Sally announced, producing a warrant card. She held it extremely tightly, obviously worried Sherlock might try and steal it. "We have reason to believe that Sherlock Holmes is not guilty of the killing for which he is currently imprisoned."

"Well that is very good news for him," the director said. "Indeed, for us all here at Thorberg. But this is not something that I can deal with, it is a matter for the _Untersuchungsrichteramt_."

"Of course," Sherlock broke in, "but you need to hear one important detail now. That is if my overprotective idiot of a brother is not hastening to Switzerland even now, having realised his dreadful oversight. The man who attacked me is not Fredrick Starr, as he claimed, but Fred Porlock, the last of Moriarty's henchmen still at liberty. Well, when I say at liberty, what I mean is that he deliberately got himself arrested in Bern a week ago in order to be able to attack me–"

"Does this statement have a point?" the director broke in. "I am trying to run an orderly establishment here, and you are saying that some foreigner deliberately broke the law to get sent to prison? When we are so overcrowded anyway? That is not _helpful_."

"Well, then, it's time to let me out," Sherlock said. "Because the man I'm supposed to have murdered isn't even dead. I'll prove it to you. John, Sally, do either of you have Lestrade's number?"

"What?" said John, hastily dragging himself out of the exhausted stupor he'd thought he might be allowed to succumb to.

"Lestrade's not at the Met anymore." Sally said. "He's on sick leave."

"So John told me," Sherlock replied. "He's in France, I know. But what I want is his telephone number there." Sally glared at him. "The number, Sally." She pulled out her mobile and handed it to him.

"Prisoners are not allowed to use mobile phones," the director said with resignation. Sherlock brushed past him, reached for the man's phone, and promptly started dialling. This isn't happening, John thought in a daze. I have now officially gone cuckoo.

"I've put it on speakerphone," Sherlock announced. "I just hope they're in, because I have things to say that would be wasted on an answering machine. Lestrade!" he bellowed down the line, as the phone rang and rang. "Answer your phone, blast it."

Suddenly a very familiar, if rather weary voice said: " _Allô, qui est à l'appareil?_ "

"Lestrade, in English, _s'il vous plaît_ ," Sherlock said, grinning. "Can you tell my _gros con_ of a brother to get his fat arse on the line and explain that he is not dead?"

"Explain to who?" Lestrade said. "What are you up to now, Sherlock?"

"Explain to whom. The director of the prison in which I am currently sitting for Mycroft's murder. Go and get my brother."

"Good afternoon, Sherlock," Mycroft's voice broke in smoothly. "Nice to hear from you. Is Herr Henker there with you? If so, I'm happy to explain the situation as necessary. As you will realise, the reports of my murder have been exaggerated..."

***

"Of course, it's all your fault that Porlock took me hostage," Sherlock announced to John the next morning.

John gave him a hard glare. He was tempted to thump him, but that probably wasn't a good move with the prison guards watching. They hadn't been able to get Sherlock out of Thorberg immediately, of course, not until Mycroft turned up in person to prove to the Bern police that he wasn't dead. And John suspected that even then Swiss bureaucracy would take a little while to process the matter. But they were letting him have an all-day visit to Sherlock, and it surely wouldn't be long now...

"Normal visiting ends at half-past ten and resumes at one." said Sherlock. "They'll let us stay in the visiting room on our own over lunchtime. I hope you've brought some toiletries for me. The right kind of toiletries." He smiled a wicked smile.

Switzerland was pretty liberal about gay rights; at least the cities were. John had checked that carefully. He hoped there was nothing in the Swiss penal code prohibiting sex during prison visits; he couldn't find a copy in English and he really didn't want to ask Anderson what the German terms were. He tried to look at his watch surreptitiously.

"8.55 a.m.," Sherlock said cheerfully. "Try to restrain yourself from either throttling or dry-humping me for a little while longer."

"You deserve the first more than the second, I reckon," John said, hoping that none of the guards were listening. "Why is what happened yesterday my fault?"

"You all rushing excitedly into the prison told Starr the game was up, and he panicked. I'd been biding my time, waiting for a chance to unmask his little game. If you'd just come and visited me as normal and told me what you knew..."

"We'd found evidence of your innocence and you wanted us not to make a fuss?" John demanded. He wondered if there was a criminal offence of aggravated talking, because Sherlock was certainly heading in that direction.

"I...you did surprisingly well. I was impressed," Sherlock said, and John decided he was going to overlook the _surprisingly_ bit. "I wasn't expecting you to solve the case, let alone Donovan and Anderson. It suggests traces of my technique have finally rubbed off on all three of you."

Trust Sherlock to give such a backhanded compliment. Still, staring across at him, knowing he could get his hands on him in – he looked at his watch again – just under one and a half hours was some comfort. He might even kiss the bastard first before thumping him.

"Well clearly none of my common sense has rubbed off...affected you," he replied. "Why the hell didn't you just tell me what you were planning to do?"

"Because it wasn't my plan," Sherlock said.

"What?"

"Did you not work out that bit? Surely it was _obvious_?"

"Mycroft and you cooked up this scheme–"

"No!" Sherlock broke in, face shining with glee. "It was Mycroft's plan, that was why it was so hopeless. Why you were able to work it out. I'd have been much more ingenious if I'd wanted to frame myself."

John had thought the headaches would stop now, but he'd obviously forgotten what Sherlock was like.

"So, when you said...no...what?"

"Mycroft's plan was that I would be safely kept out of harm's way while he was able to go undercover for a few weeks and round up Moriarty's old lieutenants. I suppose it made sense in a way: he had to have some excuse why I wasn't able to solve his murder. And I suspect he wanted to prove he could fake his death as successfully as I had done mine."

"Oh Christ! You mean this whole thing has been nothing but a competition between you and your bloody brother?" John demanded.

"No," said Sherlock. "Mycroft's strategy was sound, but his tactics were flawed. He thought I'd be more convincing as a suspect if I didn't know what was going to happen, but he was confident I'd be able to work out very soon it was him that had set this up."

"And you did?" said John, thinking: _How is it even when I solve the case, I end up looking like an idiot?_

"As soon as I could smell straight," Sherlock said, grinning.

"What?"

"My coat. I couldn't smell it near the car, the smell of burning masked it. But as soon as I was away from there, and my head had cleared a bit, I realised it. My coat smelled of Mycroft, I'd recognise his shampoo anywhere, and I even found one of his hairs on the collar. He'd been wearing the coat, so he must have been disguised as me at some point. But someone who'd snatched both of us would have no need to do that.  Therefore it must have been Mycroft himself who organised it, in order to fool CCTV cameras. He has no hope of masquerading as me normally, but in a poor-quality video with his collar turned up he might just pass. Though I wonder if he was able to do the buttons on it up or not?"

"Sherlock, does all this have a point?"

"The point, John, is that Mycroft disguised himself as me, and that therefore he was up to no good. Once I spotted that, it was easy to work out how he'd put the drug in my wine. That was ingenious, by the way. Mycroft may be hopeless at legwork, but he's quite handy at sleight-of-hand."

"He put it in when he covered your glass with his hand?"

"Yes, relying on me refusing to look at him by that point in the meal."

John sniggered. "It was dangerous, though. Someone might have spotted him."

"Or indeed when he took me out for a spin in a wheelchair and then his car. I suppose he felt he couldn't trust anyone else with the scheme. Other than the pathologists, of course, who were the one essential element for this."

"Who provided Mycroft with a spare corpse and then rigged the DNA testing?"

"What I'm not sure of yet," Sherlock said, "is whether it was a Swiss body or an English one. Molly Hooper was Mycroft's entree into the world of surplus bodies, of course, but I don't know whether she arranged for one to be flown out from England under the guise of repatriation or merely put him in contact with suitable medical staff over here."

"Molly was involved in this?"

"Obviously," said Sherlock. "When a man starts hanging round a morgue, he's always up to no good. My brother does occasionally show a certain flair, I suppose. The hire car had deeply tinted windows. I thought it was merely pretention on my brother's part; I didn't realise he was planning to drive round Bern with a corpse and an unconscious man as passengers. I must admit, he did fool me initially."

"So when you phoned me in the middle of the night, you really thought he was dead?" John asked.

"Yes. I...what else did I say? I was not entirely myself."

"It doesn't matter," John said hastily. "But if you realised Mycroft had framed you, why didn't you say something?"

"I didn't know _exactly_ what he was planning, how long he needed to be dead for. So I did the best I could to assist him. I kept my mouth shut and I sent him Lestrade."

"You told _Lestrade_ what had happened?"

"Not the details, they didn't matter. I told him that I'd been framed and there was only one man living clever enough to do that. And that if he could break off contact completely with the rest of you, Mycroft would be likely to come and find him, realise he couldn't manage alone."

Sherlock leaned back in his chair. "And I was, of course, right."

"You told Greg you'd been framed, but not me?" John could feel the pain grow inside his stomach.

"You didn't need to be told, did you? You trust me, and I trusted you would." For a moment, Sherlock's artifice had gone, leaving only the honest core that he occasionally let John catch a glimpse of. He had to respond to that, be honest as well.

"I didn't...I wasn't sure," he said. "There were times when I thought, maybe...why did you plead guilty?"

Fire sparked back into Sherlock's eyes. "Because if it had come to trial, any competent defence lawyer could have torn the case to shreds! If Anderson spotted there was something wrong with the forensics, don't you think someone competent would have done so?"

"Anderson helped me, Sherlock. You may want to forget it, but I'm not going to." John's voice was firm as he gazed at Sherlock.

"I...I am grateful for what he did," Sherlock said, at last, flushing a little. "Once I get out of here, the third thing I will do is write a letter expressing that gratitude. I can probably do it more effectively than face-to-face with Anderson's...face."

"Right," said John. "And the first two things?"

"I will need your help for those," Sherlock said. "The first, well, I hope is obvious." The smile on his face had John flushing now, and shifting slightly uncomfortably in his chair.

"And the second?"

"Mycroft's coming to Bern, to prove the authorities he's still alive. And when's he done that, you know what we're going to do?" Sherlock said, and his grin looked wicked now. "We're going to put our heads together and work out how to murder that smug bastard."


End file.
